Showing titles in History & Commentary

Still Not Safe is the story of the rise of the patient - safety movement - and how an "epidemic" of medical errors was derived from a reality that didn't support such a characterization. Physician Robert Wears and organizational theorist Kathleen Sutcliffe trace the origins of patient safety to the emergence of market trends that challenged the place of doctors in the larger medical ecosystem.

Discover the fascinating history of medicine from its primitive beginnings to the lifesaving technologies of today. Award-winning author Dr Carol Cooper takes you on a journey through the 12 objects that have come to define medicine through the ages – from the barbaric and bizarre to the...

Secrets of Women’s Healthy Ageing draws on the findings of a unique clinical study that has focused on the health of more than four hundred women in their mid-to-late lives. Over the past thirty years a team of international investigators has compiled a remarkable amount of data, aiming to raise awareness of modifiable risk factors in women’s health.

“A fascinating look into the strange and sometimes unbelievable history of hypothermic medicine. Jaekl weaves together a story that is part history lesson and part science thriller. This is truly a must-read for any fan of science and science fiction!” —Douglas Talk, MD/MPH, chief medical...

Jim Geraghty has been a passionate participant in the orphan drug revolution since its inception―a leader in the field as a strategy consultant, biotechnology executive, and venture entrepreneur. His book is in part a history, with eyewitness accounts of advances as they occurred and portraits of the pioneering scientists and physicians, tireless activists, and visionary business leaders who made the revolution happen. And it tells deeply personal stories of patients and parents willing to risk untried new therapies.

Nursing is a complex profession steeped in tradition and history. Tried-and-tested ways of working have been the mainstay of how and why nurses do what they do. Science and evidence-based practice have weakened the hold on tradition but ritual is still part of the fabric of nursing. Packed with amusing and sometimes poignant reminiscences, this book paints a picture of nursing from the first registration of SRN No 1, Ethel Bedford Fenwick in 1919, to the present day.

“DiGregorio’s storytelling is pitch-perfect; narrative and nursing, she understands, come from the same place and both are concerned with a deep understanding of character and plot….This is a brilliant book, and DiGregorio is a beautiful writer. Taking Care deserves to be on the reading...

This book covers the history of 12 important diseases and addresses public health responses and societal upheavals.

In Chasing the Intact Mind, Lutz traces the history of the intact mind concept, explaining how it influences current policy and practice affecting those with autism.

Ignác Semmelweis is remembered for the now-commonplace notion that doctors must wash their hands before examining patients. In mid-19th century Vienna, however, this was a subversive idea. With deaths from childbed fever exploding, Semmelweis discovered that doctors themselves were spreading the disease. While his simple reforms worked immediately - childbed fever in Vienna all but disappeared - they brought down upon Semmelweis the wrath of the establishment, and led to his tragic end. 

Medical science has made brilliant discoveries over the last century but as any cancer patient can attest, it has yet to conquer, or even fully comprehend, pain. Beginning with his own battle against severe migraines, and citing numerous case studies of his patients, in Why We Hurt Dr. Frank Vertosick explains how pain evolved, and by highlighting the critical functions it serves, he helps us to understand its value.

For decades, philanthropy has been viewed as a benevolent force, uplifting communities and advancing education and medicine. But what if charity wasn’t just about generosity? What if it was a strategic tool—one used to shape society, consolidate power, and reinforce the very economic system that created the wealth it distributes? In Wholesale Philanthropy: From Charity to Social Transformation, a section from E. Richard Brown’s Rockefeller Medicine Men, we uncover how corporate elites—led by figures like John D.

The Healing Cell is an easy to read, carefully researched, and clear-eyed view of medicine many decades in the making that is now paying off with treatments that repair damaged hearts, restore sight, kill cancer, cure diabetes, heal burns, and stop the march of such degenerative diseases as...

 Over the past 70 years, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, or DSM, has evolved from a virtually unknown and little-used pamphlet to an imposing and comprehensive compendium of mental disorder. Its nearly 300 conditions have become the touchstones for the diagnoses that patients receive, students are taught, researchers study, insurers reimburse, and drug companies promote. 

Did you know... Medical interventions have become the third leading cause of death in America. An estimated 10 percent of Americans are implanted with medical devices -- like pacemakers, artificial hips, cardiac stents, etc. The overwhelming majority of high-risk implanted devices have never...

By investigating thousands of descriptions of epidemics reaching back before the fifth-century-BCE Plague of Athens to the distrust and violence that erupted with Ebola in 2014, Epidemics challenges a dominant hypothesis in the study of epidemics, that invariably across time and space, epidemics provoked hatred, blaming of the "other", and victimizing bearers of epidemic diseases, particularly when diseases were mysterious, without known cures or preventive measures.

When British-born Elizabeth Blackwell earned her medical degree in America in 1849, there was an international outcry. Few at the time would have disagreed with the actress Fanny Kemble's remark - "What, trust a woman doctor - never!"

In this fun-filled dive into the wellness industry, journalist Rina Raphael looks at the roots of a sector that is now worth $4.5 trillion dollars and explores why it's been so alluring to women all over the globe, promising health and vitality in the most fashionable package. At times both fun and funny, from interviews with leading players in the industry to adventures in more bizarre practices, The Gospel of Wellness reveals how its growth is a direct result of gender inequalities and structural sexism within medicine and society.

In 1900, the U.S. sent three doctors to Cuba to discover how yellow fever was spread. There, they launched one of history's most controversial human studies. Compelling and terrifying, The American Plague depicts the story of yellow fever and its reign in this country - and in Africa, where even today it strikes thousands every year. With "arresting tales of heroism," it is a story as much about the nature of human beings as it is about the nature of disease.

G. Wayne Miller has dramatically and meticulously reconstructed an amazing true story: how a group of renegade Minnesota surgeons, led by Dr. Walt Lillehei, made medical history by becoming the first doctors to operate deep inside the human heart.